While researching in the Local Studies Centre in Ennis, our society chairperson, Arlene White, discovered a treasure trove of cassette recordings made in the early 1990s. This was a community employment scheme which invited older people living in Killaloe and Ballina at this time to tell the stories of their lives lived here, and be taped doing so. These memories went back a long way, and are so detailed.
Arlene has been studying these tapes for the past year and her work with these tapes has won the Society a Creative Ireland grant, to digitise them, and make them known in the local community.
During Heritage Week 2018, we held a public event where a chosen collection of these recordings were played and with the help of Deborah Dudgeon, committee secretary, a slideshow of relevant photographs or documents from the era being described was displayed to accompany the recordings. Read about that event here.
This event was hugely successful and in early 2019, we were shortlisted in the National Heritage Awards 2018 under the category Hidden Heritage. Read all about it here!
Due to it’s success, we decided to host another similar event during Heritage Week 2019, and this again, was a hugely successful event – you can read all about it here.
We hope to continue with this project and to continue sharing the wonderful stories told by those that are no longer with us.
Click on the menu options to read the interviews.
Killaloe-Ballina